Theological Commentary: Click Here
What an
incredible follow-up to the chapter yesterday.
Why is God not concerned about saving His ark? Why can God avoid the human trap the Hebrew
people laid for Him when they tried to force His hand of protection over
them? God can rescue His own ark from
oppression. God can make the Philistines
give the ark back all on His own! He
doesn’t need us to protect the ark. He
doesn’t even need to protect it Himself.
God is quite capable of getting His message to be among the Philistines.
The thing
that I love about this passage is that it is set up yesterday. When the ark comes, the Philistines know the
power that comes with it. Yesterday we
hear that the Philistines know that the God who fought and won against Egypt
has just joined the battlefield.
Perhaps this
gives them more reason to capture the ark.
Perhaps they think, as most ancient cultures do, that if they capture
the gods of another nation that they can control its gods, too. They take the ark and make the same mistake
as the Hebrew people.
God will not
be strong-armed. He will not be
used. God sends curses among the
Philistines and the ark goes from place to place. By the end, people start refusing to even let
the ark remain near them! God is
concerned about righteousness, not about His people always winning or His ark
always being revered. God’s emphasis is
on His righteousness and His ways, not anything else.
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